The Church Planting Essentials class is a three-day seminar describing the basic principles involved in planting a church. The material was developed and is supervised by Dynamic Church Planting International of San Diego, CA. DCPI, as it is called, was founded by Paul Becker in 1994. DCPI has planted nearly 150,000 churches worldwide and has a goal to plant 5 million churches by 2050, should our Lord tarry.
This is a powerful course! It involves lecture, small group discussion, open interaction, completion of practical exercises and exposure to church planters from many evangelical families. For everyone to date who has completed the courses, approximately 2.7 churches have been planted.
The secret to this course and all the DCPI five courses is that they are Biblically based. As a result, those who attend the classes receive a special blessing of the Lord. The first class session outlines 12 Biblical Principles of Church Planting. These include the Boss Principle (He is Lord), the Power Principle (prayer), and the Nehemiah Principle (planning) and the Team Leader Principle to name a few.
A few of the other sessions are:
- Why plant a church?
- Building a process of discipleship
- Avoiding church planting loneliness
- Develop an outreach plan
This course is not only crucial to understand church planting, but it is highly effective in understanding basic pastoring and church revitalization. Pastors who have completed the course sing the praises of how important the course is to basic pastoral skills.
The course is very practical and life related. It is designed for each student to complete a Vision-Plan-Timeline for a church planting project. To work through the process is valuable in understanding church planting and planning, in general. The course is very foundational to the DCPI process but is not a prerequisite to the other four courses. They are:
- Churches Planting Churches
- Becoming a Mentor
- Church Planting Movements
- Growing a New Church
Every pastor and church planter should attend this course.